My thoughts and stories relating to privacy, autonomy, human rights, law and the web

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Thursday, 21 October 2010

Opting out of Street View....

Nearly 250,000 Germans have 'opted out' of having their homes visible when Google's Street View comes online, though Andreas Türk, Product Manager for Street View in Germany, has admitted that some of those homes will still be visible when the service comes online, which will be some time in the near future, as the process is complex and not all instructions were clear. His blog here provides the explanations.

It's an interesting figure - is 250,000 (or, to be more precise, 244,237) a large number? As Andreas Türk says, it amounts to 2.89% of those who could have objected, and the argument can be made both ways. Google might argue that it means that the vast, vast majority don't object to Street View, so their service has some kind of overall 'acceptance' or even 'support' by the populace. Privacy advocates might say the converse - in absolute terms, 250,000 is a LOT of people. If you had 250,000 people marching on the streets with banners saying 'NO TO STREET VIEW' it would make headline news, certainly in Germany, and probably throughout Europe.

Both sides have a point: 2.89% isn't a very large proportion, but 250,000 is a lot of people, and when you look closer at the process I suspect that the privacy advocates have a stronger position. Given that the opt-out required an active process (and Google say that 2/3 of those who objected used their own online tool to do so) it does suggest that quite a lot of people care about this. If the reverse system had been in place - and you had to actively choose to HAVE your home 'unblurred' on Street View, what kind of figures would you get? Would more than 250,000 have gone through a process to make their houses visible? I doubt it....

...and what of the rest of us? Germans got a choice because their government made a point about it, and demanded that Google give them the choice before the service went active. As the BBC reports, other governments have made other kinds of objections, but none have been given the choice that the Germans have had. As I've blogged before, Germany has a pretty active privacy lobby, so it's not surprising that they are the country that has taken this step - what would the result have been if the option had been given in the UK? Or the US? Probably not as dramatic as the German result - which makes me wonder whether Google has missed a trick by not providing the option elsewhere. If they did so, and an even tinier fraction than the 2.9% in privacy-aware Germany objected, they might be able to be even bolder about proclaiming that people love Street View.....

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Lecturer in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law at the University of East Anglia - and PhD candidate at the London School of Economics, in the Law Department - with a particular interest in human rights and privacy on the internet.
You can follow me on Twitter: @paulbernalUK